Sihle Ntuli
Sihle Ntuli (1990 -) born on July the 9th in Durban, South Africa is a poet, editor, reviewer and classicist. He is from the KwaMashu township (north of Durban) though he has also lived in New Germany and currently resides between KwaMashu & Newlands West. Ntuli attended school at primary school at Lyndhurst Primary School (1997-2003) and secondary school at Kloof High School (2004-2008). From 2009 he attended Rhodes University in Makhanda where he obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree majoring in Classical Civilizations & Psychology, later completing his Honours and Master of Arts in Classical Civilizations.
He has had stints lecturing in Classics at the University of Free State (2018-2019) and the University of Johannesburg (2022), being awarded a 2019 Innovation Award for Curriculum Design & Delivery by the Centre for Teaching & Learning while in Bloemfontein.
Ntuli’s first notable literary achievement came in 2011 as one of ten poets who received a special commendation as part of Quickfox Publishing’s poetry competition won by Zanoxolo Mkhize with Mea Lashbrooke and Kobus Moolman being presented as runners-up in the same prize. He made his Durban literary festivals debut at the 2013 Time of The Writer & 2014 Poetry Africa whilst being part of the launch of the inaugural print journal editions of both Poetry Potion & uHlanga respectively.
Ntuli has established himself as an active poet on the pan-African and international literary journal circuits with publications in literary journals including the Johannesburg Review of Books, Lolwe, Commonwealth Foundation’s ADDA, Poetry London, Portside Review & Salamander Mag amongst others. He has released four books of poetry including two chapbooks, Rumblin (uHlanga 2020) & The Nation (Riverglassbooks 2023), alongside two collections, Stranger (Aerial Publishing 2015) & Zabalaza Republic (Botsotso 2023).
Ntuli is a two-time Best-of-The-Net nominee and a six-time Pushcart Prize nominee. He was one of nine recipients of 2023 Johannesburg Institute of Advanced Studies Writing Fellowship. In early 2024 he was announced by the Centre for Stories in Australia as the winner of the Patricia Kailis International Writing Fellowship.
As a literary reviewer Ntuli has written reviews for Botsotso and the Classical Studies journal ACTA Classica. As an editor he guest-edited Liberian literary journal Peppercoast Lit’s second edition alongside serving as editor for two editions of the Instagram based zine Wild Pine Poetry alongside the magazines founder Ghanaian poet Henneh Kyereh Kwaku and Nigerian poet Pamilerin Jacob.
Ntuli served as judge for the 2023 National Poetry Prize alongside Gail Dendy and Geoffrey Haresnape where he subsequently was appointed as only the second black sole editor (third overall) of South Africa’s oldest literary journal New Contrast for five editions (NC200- NC204) before resigning in late 2023.
Selected Work
Four Poems
1) KwaMashu F-Section Bus Stop (extract from ‘Stranger’)
2) Cassette (extract from ‘Rumblin’)
3) The Nation (extract from ‘The Nation’)
4) Coup d’état (extract from ‘Zabalaza Republic’)
KwaMashu F Section Bus Stop
the sneezing sound
opening closing
and away their souls go
they get on
they travel to find what they can
they have solace to fill the corners of their chests
to breathe easy
knowing that they try
they leave to earn a living
breathing a luxury
some leave to never return
as billboards block the sun
raisins in the shade
the pavements are made cold
by bodies starved of the city’s pulse
Cassette
I could never
bring myself to ask
the artist and title
of the cassette tape
that my uncle was killed for
on the streets
of KwaMashu F
the murderer still walks
his footsteps block out
our moments of silence
The Nation
the spectrum emerging across clear skies
following genesis-like floods
washing wars away
& what really happened in between?
abundant fertility of soil
lust of British solders planting seeds
on lush green fields of Zulu
& what would become of flowers in bloom?
how would they live on
under the reign of a rainbow
with only two colours
Coup d’état
for my Sotho grandmother her crowning achievement was a swift denial of my mother’s intentions for her grandsons to be given English names
following the coup that saw Lumumba executed the Mouvement Populaire de la Revolution introduced a cultural program called Authenticité forbidding the peoples of Zaire from bearing Christian names
some Port Elizabeth residents were none too pleased to learn that the old city name was no more the name of their home changed & now they needed to learn the hard clicking sound in the Xhosa name Gqeberha
one of the first changes by the Alliance des Forces Démocratiques pour la Libération du Congo-Zaïre was to revert back to the previous name Congo following the defeat of the Mobutu regime
& once in Makhanda a white secretary at an estate agency asked me if I didn’t have a Christian name that she could use because the Zulu name that my grandmother gave me was much too difficult for her to say
in 2020 a Belgian judge ruled that a single tooth taken from Patrice Emery Lumumba was to be returned to his family following many decades of a Belgian police officer holding onto it as a keepsake
Publications
Chapbooks 2020 Rumblin’ (uHlanga Press: Durban)
2023 The Nation (Riverglassbooks: Syracuse) Collections
2015 Stranger (Aerial Publishing: Makhanda)
2023 Zabalaza Republic (Botsotso: Johannesburg)
Selected Journal Publications
2021 ACTA Classica: South African Classical Studies Journal (Cape Town, RSA) Academic article credited to the University of Johannesburg Review of Chris Mann’s Poetry Collection ‘Palimpsests’
2021 Rumpus Original Poetry: Three Poems by Sihle Ntuli ‘Meditations on The Near Death’, ‘The Jazz Bantu’ & ‘Aftertaste’
2022 ANMLY ‘Mlabalaba’ & ‘Zabalaza Republic’
2022 Botsotso Online Review of Jim Pascual Agustin’s Poetry Collection ‘Bloodred Dragonflies’
2022 Botsotso Online Review of Teamhw SbonguJesu’s Poetry Collection Bury Me Naked
2022 Hotazel Review ‘Left Hand’ 2023 Best of The Net Nomination
2023 ADDA ‘Swimming versus Drowning
2023 The Florida Review (Aquifer) ‘Blues for King Kong’
2024 Best of The Net Nomination